Songs in the Dark
by Lethe Erisdottir
Summary: A collection of unrelated short fics about FFVII characters. Prompts are song titles and the occasional movie. Darkness rules, but the occasional ray of light will shine through.  Ch5 - I Just Called to Say I Love You.  -  Yuffentine!
1. In Dreams

**A/N**: The first of a collection of short fics based on song (or movie) titles. Although most will tend toward darkness or introspection, I plan to include some humorous fics (dare I say crack?) as well. This one, though, is dark.

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**DISCLAIMER**: All characters and the world they inhabit belong to S/E. Chapter title belongs to Neil Jordan. Words belong to me.

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No light. No dark. No sound. No sense of place or time.

Nothingness. Then, slowly... awareness.

It's dark where he is right now.

It's always dark at first. Dark and silent. Not cold, though. No temperature at all, really. Not hot, not cold. But not nothingness anymore either. _Something_ is there. He starts to see it, after a while. As if his eyes have accustomed to the dark, there is an infinitesimally gradual brightening. No, that's the wrong word. Not brightening. Brightening implies a lifting of darkness, of spirit. This is not that. It is a dull orangey glow coming from no particular place, a glow that gives no warmth or welcoming feeling. If anything, it is more oppressive than the darkness.

Later there is a flickering to it, but at first he only catches it out of the corners of his eyes. A slight wavering of intensity, a shifting of shadows. Right about when the flickering starts, he can hear a faint whispery hiss as well. Sounds like...the wind? The trembling intake of a breath? Just like the light, it's more of an implied shift in the air than anything he can pin down.

But that's just at first.

Slowly, the flickering shadows turn into the outlines of buildings, houses that line narrow cobbled streets. The windows, or what shattered, fang-like shards are left of them, reflect back the molten glow into deserted streets. The light does not originate here, though; rather the street is backlit by it. The fires, for that is what they must be, are further away. The same distance away that the sound comes from. It, too, is more distinct now. The distant rush and crackle of flames combines with faint voices, shouting, crying, (begging?), to produce a muffled whickering sound that rises and falls along with the flickers of light.

These streets, the buildings, are familiar even in their destruction. He has been in this place before. It's nowhere in the city, not in Midgar, it's far too simple and rustic for that. And towering over the streets of the town, peaks.

The mountains.

This place, or what is left of it, is, was...

_Neibelheim_?

The instant the word forms in his mind, a rocketing sense of horror and loss, of disbelief, arcs through his unconsciousness and without warning there is nothing solid beneath his feet and he is falling, he is plunging endlessly downward into a black, pitiless void that is swallowing up everything that he is. He is falling, even while he is walking. Walking unharmed through streets of fire that he cannot feel, with only the dead to note his passing.

Emerald green eyes fly open to dappled sunlight. Sounds of a wakening Midgar whisper in through the bedroom window, open to the outside air. Morning. He stirs, looks around. Everything is as it should be. It's only at the very edges of his vision that there is still a faint flickering quality to the light, which he ignores. It will fade. It always does.

The general rises from his bed, pushes silver hair from his eyes with trembling fingers, and calls for his breakfast.

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**A/N:** Did Sephiroth have any clue at all of what the future held for him? In this little screen-capture, the perfect Soldier receives a small gift from one of his mothers...a vision.


	2. Aerith: Tangled Up in Blue

**A/N**: The second of a collection of short fics based on song (or movie) titles. Most will tend toward darkness or introspection, although I plan to include some humorous fics (dare I say crack?) as well. This one is short and sweet. Aerith alone, remembering.

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**DISCLAIMER**: All characters and the world they live in belong to S/E. Chapter title belongs to Robert Zimmerman. Words belong to me.

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How do you forget a color? It's easy to forget a name, even a face. A person you loved goes away, never comes back, and no matter how hard you try to hold on to it, the memory fades. But forget a color? That doesn't seem possible. How do you forget a deep, cerulean blue, perhaps the color of the sky, although she made a practice of avoiding open sky mostly. The vast emptiness of it frightened her. There had been a short time, though, when that wasn't the case. When she had yearned towards it, when she hadn't been afraid. Because the sky she looked into was not vast and empty and cold, but the deep, warm, contained blue of his eyes. Mako blue, he had said.

Mako. That meant lifestream. Not normal, were mako blue eyes. Manufactured. Altered. But still, so beautiful. Perhaps because the voices of the lifestream were there, ever so faint, whispering. She didn't know. She only knew how beautiful they were. And so every day, she closed her own eyes for a time, and called back the memory of blue.

Those eyes, those mako blue eyes, could not have lied to her. Not possible. Words could lie, or the voice speaking them. But not those eyes. So she knew the promise would be kept, she would see them again, look into them, sense again that strange echoing wisp of lifestream that had made her feel so thrillingly alive. Though the memory of the face grows faint in her mind, shadowy and dim like a fading photograph left too long in the light, she will always remember the eyes.

And she will wait.

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**A/N**: Nothing to say, really; she was always Zack's. It was just the whispery voices in the mako-blue eyes that confused her. But she figured it out in the end.


	3. Reno: Wild One

**DISCLAIMER**: All characters and the world they live in belong to S/E. Title and lyrics belong to J. Greenan, J. O'Keefe, & D. Owens (Although Iggy Pop is the one who immortalized them for me). Words belong to me.

"I'm a real wild one and I like my wild fun.

In a world gone crazy, everything seems hazy.

I'm a wild one, oh baby, I'm a wild one."

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"This place seems pretty tame, yo." Reno scanned the room as if still hopeful of finding some action. One bleary-eyed bartender scrubbed glasses behind the bar, eyeing their table resentfully. Other than him and the Turks, the bar was empty.

Elena snorted. "Reno. It's 8:30. No one who parties at a place like this will even be up for another three hours."

"Yeah, well, we finished another mission, the Turks are still batting a thousand, and I feel like celebrating. That's what we DO, rookie, we're Turks, we celebrate when we win. We show 'em how it's _done_, and then we show 'em how we _do_, yo."

"That's what we do, all right," mumbled Rude into his beer. "That and paperwork." He grimaced at Tseng. Tseng raised his glass to salute Rude, but the expression on his face didn't change. The Turks had been drinking fairly steadily since they'd made it back into town after a long, hard assignment, and they were slightly the worse for wear.

Reno knocked back the rest of his drink and stood up, wobbling a bit. "Dance with me, babe!" he commanded, and extended a hand towards the table as he looked off toward the dance floor. Elena looked at the hand, then at at Rude and Tseng. This was new.

Rude lifted his shades for a moment, as if to reassure himself the request had been aimed at Elena, then settled them back down onto the bridge of his nose. Elena thought one corner of his mouth lifted a bit, but it was hard to tell with Rude. It might just have been bad beer. Tseng looked at her and raised one eloquent eyebrow. She sensed a challenge.

"No music," she smirked.

"Yo, my man!" Reno bellowed across the few feet of space between them and the startled bartender. His voice boomed hollowly through the deserted room. "We need some music!" The bartender groaned and briefly considered asking them to move on to the dive bar down the street, then reflected on his tactical position - four against one - and reconsidered. "Be just a minute, sir," he said, using a pointedly _indoor_ voice.

As he searched through the music files, he groused to himself about suburban hipster-wannabes who thought it was cool to dress up in _matching outfits_ of all things and who showed up at 8 freaking 30 at night at one of the hottest clubs in town expecting a party. What'd they do, just get off the tourist run from Gongaga? And what was with Mr. Shades-in-Clubland? It was as black as night in here, and this dude was sporting full on super-darks.

He continued to mutter to himself as he cued up "Wild One."

As the first notes of the song echoed through the deserted club, Tseng lifted his glass again and saluted his second in command. "Reno, I believe they're playing your song."

"Yah!" yelled Reno, bouncing up out of his slouch and onto the empty dance floor. Elena looked worriedly at the senior Turks, who deadpanned back at her and waited. Sure enough, in an instant, Reno bounced back to the table and grabbed Elena, dragging her out into the center of the room.

They stared at each other for a few seconds, and then suddenly Reno exploded into motion, flinging his arms randomly into the air, leaping about, hair standing on end, pony tail flying. He circled her in a weird sort of pow-wow-like dance, spinning round every now and then, his flapping jacket exposing not less than three concealed weapons. He had an intent look on his face, pure concentration, as if he were performing a professionally choreographed and technically difficult routine.

Periodically, he would lunge toward Elena and grab at one of her hands in an attempt to involve her in his violent dance.

The bartender, taking note of both the impressive weaponry and apparent madness on display, congratulated himself on his earlier decision not to try to oust these people from the empty bar on his own.

At first Elena watched Reno in alarm, making a few halfhearted attempts to ease back to the table, but Reno's seemingly random perambulations cut her off every time she did. She kept tossing glances table-ward to see if help was likely to materialize. No such luck. The two older Turks had angled their chairs toward the dance floor and sat like a couple of theatre-goers awaiting the second act.

Everything about Reno, his hair, jacket, arms, legs, everything but his goggles, (which stayed wedged on his forehead as if super-glued there) was in motion. What the hell, wondered Elena, staring at the goggles in fascination. How does he _do_ that?

A final beseeching glance at the seated Turks left her with no hope. Rude held up a napkin on which he'd scrawled the number 6.5. Tseng just winked at her. She shrugged, pushed her blond hair off her forehead, threw her head back and emitted a piercing cry that one might expect to hear from a raging Bahamut in full battle mode instead of a small blond girl in a conservative dark suit. Then, keeping track of Reno's wild gesticulations in order to avoid any collateral damage, she began to spin and stomp and leap around the center of the room in her own abandoned version of a victory dance.

Rude popped his shades back up on his forehead and stared at the heretofore straitlaced, by-the-book trainee, then changed his 6.5 to a 10. In an uncharacteristic display of emotion, _both_ of Tseng's eyebrows rose until they threatened to merge with his perfect hairline. Now two mad Turks whirled like dervishes and stormed like Apaches on the empty dance floor, taking advantage of the deserted space to expand their orbits to the far corners of the room. Every so often one or the other of them would let out a shriek, like a couple of banshees on a spree.

Behind the bar, the bartender, now wide-eyed and wary, began edging toward the exit, all the while telling himself that he would need to rethink his career strategy yet again. After repeated ass-kickings, he had agreed to trade his lucrative closing shift with Mannie, the guy who opened, thinking this would give him at least three hours of personal down time at the start of his shift and then allow him to clear out before all the liquored-up crazies started looking for asses to kick at the end of the evening. It was a good plan. It should have worked.

So why was he here, two hours into his much-anticipated down time, with "Wild One" pounding out of the sound system and some kind of crazed terrorist/assassin whirling around the room with his wacko girlfriend stomping after him? And two more stone-faced dudes silently watching the proceedings from their table. He cursed himself for having put on the extended-play version of the song. Or maybe that had been smart. Those two on the dance floor couldn't carry on like that indefinitely, could they? And once they wound down, perhaps they'd relocate.

He watched them carom around the room again, and oh no, no, no, what was this? The little blond girl had even more weaponry strapped to her slight frame than the six-foot redhead did! And who knew what the two ghouls at the table had going for them. He hadn't seen either of them change their expression since they'd arrived an hour ago, although the scary one with the shades was tapping his toe now, and holding up messages on a napkin. He wasn't sure if that was a good thing or not. But maybe putting "I Wear My Sunglasses at Night" and "Turning Japanese" in the cue wasn't such a good idea after all. Gotta pull those out. Right _now_. But first...

He had managed to edge himself all the way over to the bar phone near the exit, and he hit the emergency call button, which connected him directly to the local ShinRa security office. He gave the operator the club ID and the information that the place had been taken over by armed maniacs. She asked for a detailed description of the terrorists, and after providing less than flattering physical descriptions of his unwanted customers, he poured words like 'insane,' 'mad,' 'violent,' 'bloodthirsty' and 'drunk on their asses' into the phone. The operator encouraged him to remain calm, and assured him that their most experienced tactical team would be alerted and dispatched to his location immediately.

"Wild One" ended abruptly, and in the momentary silence the bartender heard multiple PHS chimes from across the room. The redhead stopped whirling, halting his momentum as efficiently as possible by crashing sideways into a stack of chairs at the back. Cursing and kicking himself free from the wreckage, he reached into an inner pocket, pulled out his phone and checked the incoming message. The others were doing the same. The music had started up again ("...sunglasses at night," ohhh shit), so the bartender couldn't hear any of the conversation, but from where he cowered near the end of the bar he had a clear shot of the insane redhead comparing messages with the mad little blond, then both of them turning to glare directly at him. He looked over at the two men still seated at the table, saw the song register on the big guy ("don't be afraid of the guy in shades, oh no"), and watched them both set _their_ PHS units down carefully before standing up. Well, no one could say they didn't have expressions on their faces now. And yeah, bloodthirsty and violent about covered it. What was it his ma was always telling him? Be careful what you wish for...

The redhead got to him first, when he was only a few short steps away from the door and safety, and before the lights went out he had just enough time to conclude that there was no shift that was safe for him, not ever, nowhere, nohow.

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**A/N**: Turk fluff, against my better judgement. These are not fluffy guys.

Woops, forgot to credit Corey Hart with the briefly quoted lyrics to "I Wear My Sunglasses at Night." (Eep, another Corey from the 80's. Wasn't the era just littered with them, though?)


	4. Turks:  Boom Boom POW

**Disclaimer**: All characters and the world they live in belong to S/E. Title belongs to Black Eyed Peas. Words belong to me.

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Music pounding out a primitive rhythm; crowd shifting and jerking, trying to keep up. Trying hard. Lights strobing at twice the beat of the song; the scene unfurls like a flip-book movie.

Flash.

Reno standing at the back of the bar, checking the crowded room - who's a threat, who's serious trouble, who's a wannabe looking to prove himself.

Flash.

Rude at the entrance, shades in place, looking cool, looking to Reno to okay his move.

Reno nods towards the targets and moves into the crowd.

Flash. Flash.

Reno's electromag rod is out and laid upside the head of a tough guy - bodyguard? - who gets in his way. Electricity crackles in the air around him; he breathes it in and wades into the violence with a joyous look on his face.

Flash.

The two targets are on the move, leaving a trail of bloody and broken partyers in their wake. One grabs a girl by the neck, drags her along as a shield, added insurance.

The side door blows open and Elena blocks the exit.

Flash.

No escape; the target swerves, the girl goes down, insurance policy cancelled. The target swerves again, looking for his way out.

People must be screaming, but there is only the shriek of the music instead, bass hammering underneath, and the relentless, intermittent light, freezing everything into an ongoing series of stills.

Flash.

Rude plows past three bodyguards without blinking, shades reflecting back the strobing lights. A second later, the target lays face down in a pool of blood. Rude adjusts his shades.

Flash.

Target number two looks forward - Reno. Backward - Rude. Elena waits at the side exit, eyes narrowed, looking eager.

Flash.

He makes the smart decision and lifts his weapon slowly over his head, dropping it with an exaggerated movement so there can be no misinterpretation. The weapon falls to the floor in a jerky series of stills.

The lights stutter and pause.

It _would_ have been the smart decision, except the Turks have orders to terminate. With extreme prejudice. Judgement has already been handed down and the Turks don't ask those kinds of questions.

Flash.

Crimson streak, then a darker, deeper red, flowing.

Two bodies down now, as the rest of the crowd mills around, not even sure what just happened.

Flash.

Out the back door, down the alley, transport waiting.

Gone.

In a flash.

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**A/N**: My boys. And girl.


	5. I Just Called to Say I Love You

**I Just Called to Say I Love You**

**DISCLAIMER**: All characters and the world they live in belong to S/E. Title belongs to Stevie Wonder. Words belong to me.

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Vincent Valentine pulled out his new phone and flipped it open.

Cloud could see the momentary confusion on his face, then the frustration as he muttered something under his breath.

"What's up, Vince?"

Vincent looked up, then waved the phone at Cloud. "Who _invented_ these things? and for all the Gods' sakes, _why_?"

Cloud stifled a laugh, and tried to look sympathetic.

"Yuffie again?"

"No, no; well, yes, but the good thing about the text feature is that I can just ignore her. It's just...I've been getting messages from women I don't know, asking me to 'hook up' with them. Quite a few, in fact. It concerns me. Who are they? How do they know me? And how did they get my phone number?" He sighed. "But what's even stranger, why am I getting so many messages offering me free samples to get bigger? Exactly why would I want to get BIGGER? I'm big enough. I don't think anyone would say I'm not big enough. Or at least I think I am an acceptable size. What do you think, Cid?"

For once, the airship pilot was speechless. He blinked, and looked past Vincent to Cloud for help.

Over on the other side of Vincent, Cloud was losing his battle to maintain a straight face. He felt bad about it, but sometimes Vincent's little failures to mesh with the times were just plain funny. And this; well this wasn't just funny, it was...it was... He bit down on his tongue to keep from laughing. Something suspiciously like a tear leaked from the corner of one eye.

Before Cloud or Cid could stop him, Vincent stepped over to the table where Reno and Rude sat with a cluster of empty bottles in front of them. "What do you gentlemen think? Is there something about me that would make a person think that I am not big enough?"

Reno, caught in mid-quaff by the question, choked and blew a stream of beer foam out of his nose. Rude rude pushed a stack of napkins toward him without looking (he'd clearly been there before), and cocked his shades in Vincent's direction.

"Are you having, um... size issues, Vincent?" Reno started choking again, and Rude snatched the beer away from him.

"It's this new phone. I keep getting these messages offering me free samples of products to make me bigger. I dare say you are the only person in this entire bar that is bigger than me [here Rude nodded graciously, while Cloud, Reno and Cid all looked ready to argue the point], so why would people be targeting me specifically with these offers?"

"Have you opened any of them?" asked Reno, swiping his beer back from Rude and taking a long pull from the bottle.

"I was cautioned when I purchased the phone that I should avoid opening messages from persons I do not recognize, at least until I have set up my security features, so no, I have not opened them. But there are quite a lot. It seems that people are talking about my size, and for some reason find it lacking."

Rude grabbed the beer back before Reno could choke on it again.

Reno reached out a hand and said, "Let me see your phone."

Vincent handed it over. Reno scanned through Vincent's incoming messages - several pages worth, well over half of which were size-increasing offers. He noted that almost all of the rest were from Yuffie, and most of those were some variation on "Answer the phone!" The rest...he pulled out his own phone and copied a few numbers into the memory, then handed the phone back to Vincent.

"Okay, I can solve your problem for you," he stated.

"Please!" said the baffled gunman.

"Only..." Reno meaningfully eyed the empty bottles in front of him.

"Of course. It would be my pleasure to offer you a cocktail," said Vincent.

"Three beers," said the redhead to the barmaid, then looked over at his partner. "You want anything?"

Rude shook his head. He was still basking in Vinnie's unknowing compliment and was a bit unwilling to take advantage of him under the present circumstances.

"Right," said Reno. "The solution to your problem is simple. Answer Yuffie's calls."

Vincent looked from Reno to Rude.

Rude just nodded. Even without having seen the messages, he knew where this was going.

"How is answering Yuffie's calls going to improve the matter of my size?"

Behind Vincent, there was a momentary clatter as Cloud fell off his bar stool.

"Simple. Vince my man, you've been spammed by a Viagra service. Now normally, everybody gets a few of these random messages a day, it's just the way it goes what with all the bots and the spiders and everything crawling all over the system. Once you set up your security features, you won't even see those. But you've had this new phone, what, three days? And you have four PAGES of messages from these guys. That's a bit excessive. Now see here? All these messages started coming in after the last ignored message from Yuffie. You do the math."

Vincent peered intently at the messages for several minutes. He looked up at Reno, already on the second of his three beers. He looked at Rude, whose lips had curled very slightly up at the corners. He turned around and looked at Cloud, who just shook his head and kept his hand clamped over his mouth, and at Cid, who was rapidly punching numbers into his own phone.

"Cid?"

"Aw, damn it, I can't let you just sneak up on the brat, it's only fair to let her know you're coming for her," growled Yuffie's erstwhile drinking buddy.

He looked back at Reno. "Viagra."

Reno nodded.

"So, my 'size'..."

Reno gave him an evaluating look. "I wouldn't concern myself about it, yo. Hanging around with this lot (he jerked his head in the direction of Cloud and Cid) you got nothing to worry about."

Vincent didn't wait to see the outcome of the ensuing brawl. He simply assumed it would end as it usually did these days, with everyone downing a final round to take the edge off the random bruises after a bit of rough and tumble. Really, they were almost like a bunch of puppies. He almost smiled as he compared them to themselves only a few short years ago, when they had been locked in a bitter battle almost to the death.

No, he didn't need to wait for the outcome to know how it would end.

What he DID need right now was to find the little ninja who had somehow managed once again to violate his own personal phone.

And if size was a concern of hers, well, perhaps it was time to resolve certain other as yet unspoken issues between them as well.

As he walked away from Seventh Heaven, Vincent Valentine checked his phone again. And then he smiled.

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**A/N:** It's a late April Fool's story, I guess.

Oh, I should probably explain...this story idea came to me when I was scanning my junk mail before deleting.


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